Fixed bug where export didn’t seem to be working when the backdrop was turned on (in actuality the progress window was displaying *behind* the backdrop window and the export was proceeding, but you couldn’t see it). [1429]

In the wake of the Stykz 1.0 announcement, one of the features that is in Stykz is the ability to import Piv 3 .stks (something the beta versions didn’t have). As a fallout of adding the code to do this, I figured it would be helpful for the Pivot community as a whole to be able to convert Piv 3 .stks so they can be used in Piv 2 – so I made a little utility app that will do just that!

You can download it here – take note that if your Piv 3 .stk has a sprite in it, the sprite will be ignored and the rest of the figure will be converted. Should run on everything WinXP and higher, maybe even Win2K. (Remember that .pivs are NOT converted, just .stks.)

A minor update to Stykz was released that fixes a bug where double-clicking a Stykz document file to launch it would generate an error on Windows, a bug on Mac where you couldn’t export certain files to GIF format, and fixed a bunch of bugs in the Stykz Help app.

It’s been almost a year since the last public release of Stykz (RC4, Build 205 back in December of 2009), but I’m thrilled to be able to announce that the OFFICIAL RELEASE of Stykz 1.0 is now available for download, either through “Check for Updates” inside Stykz RC4, or from the download page on the Stykz web site.

During the last year, Stykz has been heavily tested by dozens of people across Mac and Windows platforms and in the process tons of bugs have been fixed and a few features added or refined. You can read the full release notes, but here are some key additions to Stykz 1.0:

Support for importing Pivot 3 .stks (sprites in a .stk are skipped – but the rest of the .stk is imported)

You can drag .stk and .styk files from the desktop into an open document to import it

GIF output is completely managed by a separate bundled command-line app (GIFsicle), so exported .gif files are much smaller, optimized, and fully compatible with all apps (AFAICT)

You can remove a node from a polyfill-in-progress without having to cancel and restart polyfilling (just Alt/Option-click the node that’s currently part of the polyfill you’re trying to create and it will be removed from the polyfill)

Export settings are now saved with the document and reused as the default choies when you go to export the animation again.

You can now use the < and > (actually it’s “,” and “.”) to go forward or backward one frame.

Full documentation is in a separate “Stykz Help” app that includes detailed info for Pivot users looking at Stykz and for new users in general (a link to the ‘Create Your First Animation’ – one of the topics in the Stykz Help app – is on the Welcome Screen). Just choose Help > Stykz Help to bring up the app.

The release of Stykz 1.0 coincides with a change to the Stykz web site, which is now cleaner and easier to use and has lots of great info about Stykz, including examples of Stykz animations created by forum members (some of which also allow you to download the related .stykz file so you can take it apart and see how the animator created the animation).